2023 Nissan Ariya: quick drive

2023 Nissan Ariya

Talk about turning up late for your own party. After first being unveiled in 2020, and being on sale in some markets since 2021, Australians are yet to see the Nissan Ariya, the Japanese brand’s first electric SUV, on our roads or in local showrooms.

In fact, Australia is yet to get a date of arrival pinned onto the calendar for this next-generation Nissan SUV.

It’s particularly strange, when you consider the pioneering role the Nissan Leaf had in bringing fully electric propulsion to motoring scene. Not just in Australia, but globally.

Better late than never however, and the Nissan Ariya is going arrive in a burgeoning electric car scene in Australia, with plenty of room for sales volume.

And it’s not going to be a niche player either, according to Nissan’s regional head Guillame Cartier.

Unlike the limited-numbers Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq range, Nissan promises the Ariya will arrive in Australia with good sales volume.

Enough perhaps, to give the runaway success Tesla Model Y a run for its money.

Enough prattling, however. We had the opportunity to experience the Nissan Ariya, and couldn’t help but be impressed with what is on offer.

What do we know about the Nissan Ariya so far?

Without any Australian-specified model available to look at, we were instead presented with a handful of Ariyas from the United Kingdom, where it has been available since 2022.

This drive experience was relatively short as well, so we’ve kept this review to a so-called ‘quick drive format’. For those who want more information, follow this link.

While specific Australian specifications are still being worked through by Nissan, we can take some inspiration of what we might get from the British specifications.

Over in Blighty, the Ariya is available with three different powertrain configurations. The most-affordable uses a 63kWh battery pack, with front-wheel drive and a claimed driving range of 402 kilometres. Peak output for this model is rated at 160kW and 300Nm.

Next up the powertrain ladder is long-range model with an 87kWh battery, which also has front wheel drive and an extended driving range of up to 529 kilometres. Power gets bumped up to 178kW, while torque stays steady at 300Nm.

At the top of the tree is an E-4ORCE all-wheel drive model, which gets the same 87kWh battery but twin electric motors produce a combined 225kW. Torque doubles as well, at 600Nm. Range is pegged at 500km.

What we are driving is piggy in the middle: front-wheel drive with the big battery and 178kW/300Nm.

2023 Nissan AriyaSeatsFiveBoot volume466L seats upLength4595mmWidth1850mmHeight1660mmWheelbase2775mm

What is the Nissan Ariya like inside?

There is a variety of trim levels on offer as well, but we’ve got effectively top specification here (for the UK market). And using Nissan’s new electric platform, the Ariya has a modern and well presented interior that feels like its own take on premium. It’s quite refreshing.

Nissan calls it ‘Timeless Japanese Futurism’, which to me sounds like an oxymoron. It doesn’t matter though, because the interior of the Ariya feels well executed and stands out as different.

Instead of your more typical selection of leathers and piano blacks, the Ariya uses a comforting mix of textural materials like fabric and alcantara. As we’ve seen in many other EVs, there is a theme of copper around the air vent areas, that seems to be an in-vogue design element.

One thing I haven’t seen before is the row of illuminated buttons across the dashboard, built into the faux wood panel with haptic responses. They satisfyingly click when pressed.

And owing to its electric-only platform, there is a big sense of space through the footwells and dashboard area. It’s only after you sit in a dedicated EV like this Ariya, that you realise how much space a transmission tunnel and regular old glovebox can take up.

This Ariya has a regular glovebox as well, but it’s peculiarly small for storage. It can be moved forwards and backwards, which does affect the feel of the cabin overall, and additional storage can be found in a centrally located glovebox in the dashboard.

Once again, an electric skateboard platform champions space and airiness in the second row. Nissan refers to the Ariya as a ‘Crossover Coupe’, whatever that means (another oxymoron?) but it feels like a well proportioned medium-sized SUV from the back seats. There is plenty of legroom and headroom on offer – with a huge footwell area – and visibility is good as well.

And when you consider the Ariya’s external proportions (nearly 4.6 metres long) and its skateboard-like underpinnings, this starts to make sense.

Marketing terminology aside, this is, for all intents and purposes, a medium-sized SUV.

The boot of the Ariya measures in at a reasonably commodious 466 litres, while our previous driving experience of the Ariya tells us that only 406 litres is available when paired to a space-sucking twin-motor powertrain and its bigger battery array.

Key details2023 Nissan AriyaEngineSingle externally excited electric motorPower178kWTorque300NmDrive typeFront-wheel driveTransmissionSingle-speed automaticPower to weight ratio84kW/tWeight1950kg

What is the Nissan Ariya like to drive?

Because the Nissan Ariyas in Australia are yet to be properly homologated for Australian roads, our test drive was limited to a closed loop road in a testing facility in Mount Cotton, Queensland. The road surface was in mostly very good condition, which meant our ability to assess the Ariya’s ride comfort on everyday crappy surfaces was limited.

However, we could still glean some information from this test drive. Firstly, the steering feel of the Ariya is lightweight and fast, but sharp and responsive. It lends a sporty character to the Ariya’s driving experience, keenly turning into corners with only a little twist of the flat-bottomed, minimalist steering wheel.

Keep turning in harder and harder, and you’ll find the inherent weight of an EV become more apparent. Physics cannot be overcome unfortunately, and you’ll feel the tyres squirm (along with a screeching warning) as they reach their operating limit and dip into understeer. 

Up to that point, the Ariya feels great. Enjoyable even, with the steering and balanced body control. 

The driving experience is otherwise – and typically for an SUV – serene. Electric motors whir away unobtrusively in the background, but do get more noticable when you peg the Ariya’s powertrain for all it’s worth.

With 178kW and 300Nm available, this specification Ariya feels competent in terms of performance, without ever threatening to feel like a rocketship. That instantly available torque makes progress easy and painless however, which would be beneficial for everyday around-town driving. 

Zero to 100 kilometres per hour is achieved in a not-too-shabby 7.6 seconds in our front-wheel drive tester with the larger battery, which is actually (because of the latter) slower than the base powertrain offering.

We weren’t able to test out the all-wheel drive Ariya E-4ORCE, which has a 5.7-second time to the benchmark 100 kays. And we still aren’t sure which specification levels will be offered to the Australian market. 

Is the Nissan Ariya energy efficient?

We also weren’t able to get a good gauge on energy consumption, either. We didn’t have a whole lot of time behind the wheel this time, and the driving didn’t really mimic real-world conditions. 

However, Nissan’s continued use of E-Pedal, which is a one-pedal driving model that first appeared on the Leaf, should help maximise your use of electrons by getting as much power back into the battery as possible. 

While the Nissan Ariya comes with a CHAdeMO charging plug in it’s home market of Japan (where it is more popular), European examples of the car feature a Type 2 plug. The latter is certainly more popular in Australia these days, and we expect to see this configuration for the Ariya locally.

However, Nissan Australia representatives weren’t in a position to confirm this.

In other markets, the Ariya is capable of charging at speeds of 85kW, which can fully charge this larger battery in a little over one hour. A charge from 10 per cent to 80 per cent would be a more real-world situation however, and that number gets trimmed to 47 minutes.

This new Nissan Ariya electric car cannot come soon enough, and our initial experiences of this car tell us it’s going to be an impressive offering. However, that depends largely on how sharply the car will be priced against its competition, as well as specification levels. 

It’s a quantum leap in front of the Leaf in terms of look, feel, technology and capability, which it needed to be. We’ll be waiting until 2024 at the earliest to see Ariyas on Australian roads, and are looking forward to seeing what Nissan can do. 

Just like Tony Butterfield in 1997, the Ariya is going to be running headlong into some stiff competition. Kia’s EV6, alongside Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 are all compelling offerings in their own ways. And while we wait for this Australian-delivered Ariya to materialise, that competition is only going to thicken.

Can the Ariya take on (and take down) the reigning sales champion Tesla Model Y? Only time can tell.

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